Most of the people I know who watch End of Suburbia or Crude Impact for the first time, without the benefit of prior exposure to the concept of Peak Oil let alone the implications, come away from those movies feeling rather shell shocked. There’s just no way to have a positive outlook after being faced with those sober truth’s. It takes a bit for the “we’re screwed” feelings to settle down for people to realize that life is going to go on tomorrow pretty much as it did today.
But hopefully they also come away with the realization that our current path is not sustainable, and that we have a great deal of planning to do to prepare society for the transition that is inevitable, whether we like it or not. Yes, we should have started long ago, but hopefully they have a new resolve to begin changing their lifestyles to prepare for the future.
No amount of denial and wrangling to maintain an inherently unsustainable economy is going to make the truth go away. So politicians who tell you that they have the exclusive answers to your woes, and that a vote for them will ensure life will stay pretty much as it has been, are being either dishonest if they know the truth or incompetent if they don’t.
Anyone who reads this blog or hears me speak regularly knows that I don’t buy into the never-ending-growth-economy concept that we have all been force-fed our entire lives. You’ll also know that I don’t buy into the hydrogen economy, ethanol, biodiesel (at least not on the massive scale that their proponents envision) or any of the other technological fixes that are designed with the goal of maintaining our current unsustainable personal mobility. I believe we should be putting massive public support into public transit systems with the goal of moving millions of people out of cars. Not a few hundred thousand. Millions. Every day. Better yet, I advocate walkable cities and different living arrangements where most people can walk to work from where they live.
In yesterday’s podcast of The National on Global came this story, about the escalation in the price of food. This is just one of the results of rising energy prices, and we can expect more in the years to come.
So could someone please tell me again how things like ethanol make sense? Or how urban sprawl, paving over productive farmland in communities that do not offer anything within walking distance, is a good model for living arrangements?
And for those that feel we must increase productivity of farmland as stated in the clip, what will we do as natural gas, a main ingredient in commercial fertilizer, becomes too expensive or so rare that we have to choose between heating our homes or fertilizing our crops? Or the diesel used for harvesting?
This is just one more signal that we can’t continue on our path of never ending growth in the economy, in our population, energy use, resource use, food production, etc. It is unsustainable and needs to stop. We need to find another way. I don’t pretend to have all the answers on how to do this, but at least the Green Party is acknowledging, rather than still denying, the problem.
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This is the very reason I have spent the last decade trying to convince other family members/friends to buy a speculative property with me. While not having the capital to build a “commune” or something the like having land now, leasing it to an organic farmer at a reasonable rate would give it years to have it’s fertility improved, years for orchards of fruits and nuts to mature, years for berry patches to spread and habitats for benificial insects to flourish. At some point in the future I would be capable of building the green home of my dreams and ride out the comming die out.
The discussions always come down to, your paraniod or technology will save us. That’s like saying 1 more drink will stop the hangover from happening. Been there, tried that, got the t-shirt.
Better yet, I advocate walkable cities and different living arrangements where most people can walk to work from where they live.
That sounds great in theory, but I’m curious how we’d go about achieving this? If you’re building a planned community from the ground up, then maybe, but what do you do about Canada’s towns and cities that already have their buildings laid out? We can’t just start flattening houses in the middle of a residential area and drop in factories and other places for people to work. It could take hundreds of years to change the existing land uses to achieve the mix you’re describing.
Also, no matter how well you can mix up the layout of residential, commercial and industrial areas, people will still be limited in their choice of job if you advocate having people live within walking distance of their place of employment.
Are you suggesting that people just take whatever work they can find where they live, or are you suggesting that people simply relocate their families to where they can find the work they enjoy? Personally, I would never agree to either option.
Dave
The Realities of Peak Oil will eventually require somewhere between 15-30% of the population to return to the land just to sustain agriculture without the imput of cheap energy, fertilzer and pesticides. Currently about 1% of the population is on the land. A reasonable example is Cuba, they were cut off from fuel, chemicals and spare parts when the soviets collapsed but have managed to move back to the land and become self sufficient in food, but with the loss of their high protien diet, a drop in average weight and all the health benefits associated with eating right and being active.
We are worse off than they are as far as need for fuel(weather), growing season length, average commuting distances, and most importantly our expectation and sense of entitlement.
Peak oil will eventually mean all but the most efficient, best planned cities or section of cities will become slums or vacant. Yes there will be sections taken down on purpose or through a combination of disaster(fire) and broken infrastructure, or unrest.
If you don’t buy into peak oil/gas than there is no point arguing but what happens when a 40 storey condo loses natural gas pressure for 3 days and all the pipes freeze in Feb? It probably won’t be liveable and insurance companies won’t cover this kind of event for long after it starts happening. How many non electronic pilot lights will gas people or cause explosions when gas pressure is restored. Energy shortages will cause all maner of issues people have not taken into account.
Look at Detroit, Cleveland, even Buffalo as jobs left so did people until the cities began to unwind, this is quite possibly the destiny of all mega cities. Detroit however has been so depopulated so long that burned out blocks in the core have now been converted to commercial market gardens moving them ever so slightly towards sustainability and a return of community. As cities shed density as people go rural I do see disfuntional communites getting bull dozed for redevelopment or naturalizing.
Urban renewal does happen Dave and yes it will take time,(probably too long) but should we not at least make new developments work properly, high density, walkable, net zero energy houses, etc? At least it’s a start, the other option is to fiddle while Rome burns.
hybrid cars and CFLs are not going to change the impact of peak oil which will eventually lead to peak food, peak resource extraction, peak population, peak consumerism. The answer is much bigger than this but probably unsellable, so we have to do what we can, knowing that no one else will being even this proactive.
why don’t we start by making local governments insist that sidewalks and bicycle lanes be built with every new road and construction on exsisting roads.?